Re: [OT] Crazy idea: Design open-source graphics chip

From: John Bradford
Date: Thu Jan 29 2004 - 11:14:16 EST


Quote from Stephen Smoogen <smoogen@xxxxxxxx>:
> On Wed, 2004-01-28 at 18:11, Christian Unger wrote:
> > Oh ... don't get me wrong, i think that the conceptual idea is awesome.
> > Personally, i wouldn't know where to begin, but can the open source community
> > compete with Nvidia and ATI? afterall this goes beyond software, it delves
>
> Well I think the first problem is that the idea is currently too big. If
> someone were to do this sucessfully they would make the first open cards
> something like a Trident 8900C. Something small but usable for people
> who need it. The next cards would add onto it, and so on and so on until
> you got a base that would meet the 3D ATI/Nvidia needs. Trying to aim
> for the top at the beginning is a great way to crater.

A simple framebuffer connected to the parallel port would be trivial
to make, and it would be suprisingly useful for simple applications
such as word processing. Literally a handful of components soldered
on to a piece of stripboard and well written drivers for the
framebuffer console and X is all it would take. No need for anything
remotely fancy at first.

John.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/